On the Threshold

Paul Scott, New American Scenery.

Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned by law, custom, convention,

and ceremonial. 1

In liminality people ‘play’ with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them. 2

When he began to experiment with printing on ceramics Paul Scott soon found himself in liminal

territory: his creative practice was becoming unclassifiable. ‘In those days’, he has said, ‘there was no-one

around me who was doing anything remotely similar, but that’s a double-edged sword: it launches you

into a no-man’s-land, because you’re not a painter or a fine art printmaker and you’re not a potter or a

craftsperson ... In a way I enjoyed it immensely because I was doing things that people hadn’t seen

before.’ 3

That was back in the 1970s. Nowadays Paul Scott is a leading international figure in the field

of ceramics and print. He is known for his subversive manipulation of transfer-printed designs

on factory-made tableware such as the Willow Pattern and Spode’s Italian. Take for example an early

edition of plates: The Scott Collection, BNFL in Cumbrian Blue(s) (1996) (Fig. 1). The design is a

refashioned version of Spode’s Italian; it would be indistinguishable from the mass-produced

original, except that warning signs for radioactivity are incorporated into the border and the

stylised central landscape has been replaced with a view of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing

plant, less than forty miles from his home in Cumbria, England. Over the years his repertoire

has expanded and with the advent of digitality his techniques have diversified, but his work still

challenges conceptual boundaries and this continues to be his signature approach: Paul Scott

uses domestic ceramics to comment on our life and times.

Victor Turner The Ritual Process, Cornell University Press, New York, 1991 (1st pub 1969) p.951

Victor Turner Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology, Rice Institute Pamphlet, Rice 2

University Studies, 60, no. 3 (1974). https://hdl.handle.net/1911/63159.

Dialogue between Paul Scott and Jo Dahn, 5th August 2014. 3

1

Fig.1 The Scott Collection, BNFL in Cumbrian Blue(s), in glaze decal print on bone china plate, 25cm dia, Paul Scott 1996.

His strategies involve a unique blend of archival research and studio practice. From 2004 to

2009 he undertook doctoral studies in order to recuperate a lost history of British and European

transferwares. Designs had migrated across borders to be produced by factories in more than 4

one country: some architectural and landscape motifs were re-used to show a different place

with each iteration. Transferwares can thus be described as ‘remediated’ and ‘confected’.

‘Remediated’ because motifs produced in one medium – print engraving – are represented via

another, the ceramic surface; ‘confected’ because their imagery might be culled from more than

one source. Paul Scott submits them to further, equivalent processes and in so doing opens up

new territory: liminal territory where established understanding is unsettled and fresh meaning

allowed to emerge.

Originally used by anthropologists to denote the symbolic separation, transition and re-

incorporation associated with rites of passage, notions of liminal space and the condition, or state

of liminality have broadened in recent years.

Paul Scott Ceramics and Landscape, Remediation and Confection – a Theory of Surface, PhD thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University (2009). 4

Online: http://www.cumbrianblues.com/pdfs/CLRC.pdf

2

‘The concept of liminality incorporates a spectrum of ‘betweenness’: interstitial spaces,

intersectional identities, temporal margins, geographical borders, cultural boundaries,

dialogical practices and dialectical perspectives.’ 5

Through this lens, the studio can be seen as liminal territory: an exploratory ‘betwixt and

between’ purposefully separate from the quotidian.

Describing his practice, Paul Scott maps a liminal position: ‘within and on the edge of studio

ceramics – and completely outside it.’ The present essay sets out from an equivalent place; it 6

offers an appreciation and contextualisation of his latest work - New American Scenery – much of

which was still in progress as he prepared for a series of exhibitions in the USA. I have written

about Scott’s ceramics before, in connection with co-curated exhibitions in 2002 and 2014. In 7

both cases I was discussing already existent artefacts. This is different: stepping now into the flow

of his creative and intellectual process is akin to stepping into what the anthropologist and

leading exponent of liminality Victor Turner called ‘...a realm of pure possibility whence novel

configurations of ideas and relations may arise.’ 8

American transfer-printed earthenwares

New American Scenery is permeated with Paul Scott’s response to American transfer-printed

earthenwares. A multi-year grant from the Alturas Foundation enabled him to travel and

conduct research in the USA, where he sought out historical transferwares in museum

collections and visited many of the sites that are illustrated on their surfaces. Further research 9

in the archives at Wedgwood, Spode and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London was

supported by Arts Council England.

Although they are called ‘American’, these transfer-printed earthenwares were not made in

the United States: they represent the efforts of British firms to supply the growing American

market in times of great change following the struggle for independence. Scott’s activities recall

Teresa O’Rourke The poetics and politics of liminality: new transcendentalism in contemporary American women's writing, PhD Thesis, Loughborough 5

University 2017, p.49.

Paul Scott cited in Amy Gogarty Confected Landscapes and Contemporary Vignettes, Ceramics, Art and Perception No.75, 2009.6

Jo Dahn, Remember Me When This You See; Ceramics by Paul Scott... University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2002; Confected, Borrowed and Blue, Holburne 7

Museum of Art, Bath, England, 2014.

Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, Cornell University Press, New York, 1967.8

http://alturasfoundation.org/artist_residence/paul-scott/9

3

what happened in the early nineteenth century, when factory owners from Staffordshire,

England, or their agents, travelled to the new Republic. In 1822 for example, pottery owner John

Ridgway toured the North Eastern States. He met with merchants and took orders for the

ceramics he would produce on his return to Britain. Ridgway hired local artists to accompany

him and sketch suitable subjects which, as engravings, would subsequently be used to decorate a

dinner service titled ‘Beauties of America.’ (Fig.2) It comprises twenty two views, depicting 10

public edifices such as hospitals, churches and libraries. Like several other Staffordshire pottery

owners, Ridgway was a reformer with a strong sense of social responsibility and his beliefs

influenced his choice of imagery. 11

Fig.2 John and William Ridgway, ‘Beauties of America’ Philadelphia Library, transferware plate, 1829-1830, (RISD Museum).

In Boston, the artist was probably Abel Bowen (1790-1850). Ruth Ann Penka has researched Ridgway’s journal. See: https://10

www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Ridgway/enter.htm

John Ridgway was a founder of the Pottery Philosophical Society and a prominent member of the Methodist New Connexion 11

Church. He rejected the offer of a Knighthood because ‘I could accept no honour that would sever me from my Brethren in Christ.’ James Stacey, A Prince in Israel: or, Sketches of the life of John Ridgway, Hamilton Adams & Co. London, MDCCCLXII (1862) p.263

4

Transfer-printed ceramics like the ‘Beauties of America’ fostered pride in the new Republic.

They showed civilisation where there had been wilderness and harnessed a burgeoning sense of

national identity, acting as a focus (perhaps a catalyst) for meaning construction. In the first part

of the nineteenth century they may have provided the only images of change that many people

who lived in the farthest-flung territories would ever see.

By the end of the century ‘Old Blue’, as it was often called, was energetically targeted by

collectors. Examples from between c1820 and c1830 were especially prized for the intensity of

their deep blue colour. According to the records of the firms that produced them, the blue was

‘far deeper and richer than the ordinary blue used for the English market.’ It fetched a higher 12

price too; trade with America was lucrative, when it was halted following Jefferson’s Embargo Act

of 1807 restricting imports the Staffordshire Potteries suffered considerable economic hardship.

Some firms estimated that a third of their production was affected. 13

China hunting; the discourses of collecting

Despite the fact that they were not produced in America, American transfer-printed

earthenwares were imagined as true relics of a nation grown from humble beginnings. They

constituted a kind of retrospective evidence. Freedom, equality, progress, enterprise, social

cohesion: their illustrations seemed to capture the spirit of a moment when there was everything

to play for and they inspired lively discourse amongst the collecting community. ‘Many bore

mottoes, inscriptions, likenesses and views relating to America and the celebrated Americans of

the time and thus form interesting mementos of the wars of the Revolution and of 1812.’ (Fig.3) 14

So wrote Alice Morse Earle, whose influential book on China Collecting in America (1892) was widely

cited. She was one of the so-called china hunters who published glorified collector’s manuals that

interwove technical information such as factory marks with personal anecdote. 15

‘I’m in such a hurry to show it to you! It's a tall blue teapot — or maybe it's a coffee-pot, I

don't know — but what do you think it's got on it— a picture of the Hartford State-house!

Frank Falkner The Wood Family of Burslem, Chapman & Hall, London, 1912 p.8512

The embargo was lifted following the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814.13

Alice Morse Earle China Collecting in America, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1892 p.135.14

Their activities have been described as a kind of sport. ‘Americans were enthralled by the chase...’ Anne Anderson, The Romance of Old 15

Blue: collecting and displaying Old Blue Staffordshire China in the American Home c1870-1938, in Interpreting Ceramics 2013, issue 15. http://www.interpretingceramics.com/issue015/articles/03.htm

5

Don't you remember when I went to Hartford with papa, and I told you how we went to

the State-house, and saw the Legislature? Well this is the very same building…' 16

Fig.3 Ralph Stevenson & Williams, Jefferson and Lafayette, transferware plate, c.1835, (RISD Museum).

Such accounts often have a breathless tone and read like adventure stories, as raiders from the

city scour the New England countryside and descend on humble cottagers in their mission to

rescue old china from dusty attics. Annie Trumbull Slosson described ‘entering an ancient 17

farm-house, forcing one's way into pantry or garret, coaxing, threatening, wheedling, dazing the

inmates into disposing of quaint old crockeries...’ Slosson thought china hunting was ‘a good 18

service to art and education.’ This was collecting for the nation. Indeed, today the results of the 19

china hunters’ efforts can be found in many American museums.

Annie Trumbull Slosson The China Hunters Club by The Youngest Member, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1878, p.235.16

Many of the raiders were women. See: J. Samaine Lockwood, Shopping for the Nation: Women's China Collecting in Late-Nineteenth-Century New 17

England in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 1 Mar. 2008, pp. 63-90

Slosson China Hunters Club p.21418

Slosson China Hunters Club p.231.19

6

You had to seek them in museum stores for much of the twentieth century, however.

Transferware had fallen out of favour by the 1940s and despite its popularity in the nineteenth

century, it became a neglected genre. Following the demise of the ceramics industry in the West,

and the onset of post-industrialism, creative practitioners have begun to turn their attention to

factory products and production methods. Paul Scott’s practice and research have been highly

influential in opening up the field.

He describes the development of New American Scenery as a series of discoveries, many of which

have come about through archival exploration. Two plates titled ‘Extinct’ and bearing the legend

‘Forget Me Not’ for instance, commemorate American species of birds, fish and a butterfly that

have died out in the twentieth century due to loss of habitat. The print motifs have a nostalgic

feel. In a process that Scott calls ‘harvesting’, they were culled from a forgotten archive of 8600

tissues for transfer printing that he discovered in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Fig. 4 Highlands Hudson River, transferware platter, Enoch Wood & Sons (1819-46), (Smithsonian Collection).

Scenic wonders: Thomas Cole

The roots of New American Scenery go back at least as far as 1999, when Paul Scott handled a

transfer-printed platter from the Ohio State University collection, titled Highlands Hudson

7

River. (Fig.4) This is an object that punches above its weight. The vivid deep blue glaze engulfs

the ceramic body, and the imagery derives from the Hudson River School of romantic landscape

painting. He was captivated:

‘… it was quite unlike anything I had seen before. That was the first time I had seen one of

the dark blue wares … I was aware of their existence, but the experience of seeing the

transferware platter for real, and handling it was very important.’   20

Highlands Hudson River belongs to a group of transferwares with romantic views of landscape after

the paintings of Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School. They seem to outstrip the genre: it

is easy to forget that one is looking at an item of tableware. Nancy Siegel argues that their

illustrations signified ‘America's bounty, scenic wonders, and the success of democracy in the

New World’ and that ‘a rise in nationalism coincided with a rise of interest in American

landscape imagery by the 1830s.’ Most people could not have afforded to buy a painting by

Thomas Cole, ‘possessing engravings and ceramics with imagery based upon Cole's artistry was

the next best thing.’ 21

One of Cole’s most glorious landscapes, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a

Thunderstorm (1836), is nicknamed ‘The Oxbow’ because it looks down on a bend in the

Connecticut River, where it meanders through Pioneer Valley. The painting has been 22

interpreted in relation to Western expansion and the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, a land deal

with France that resulted in America acquiring some 827,000 square miles of territory west of the

Mississippi.

‘...many believed that it was a divinely ordained obligation of Americans to settle this

westward territory.  In The Oxbow Cole visually shows the benefits of this process. The land

to the east is ordered, productive, and useful. In contrast, the land to the west remains

unbridled. Further westward expansion—a change that is destined to happen—is shown

to positively alter the land.’ 23

In his Essay on American Scenery (1836) Cole expressed ambivalence about this ‘divinely ordained

obligation’, known as the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. While he accepted that the wilderness

Personal communication 29/4/201920

Nancy Siegel Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery , exhibition catalogue essay, Juniata College 21

Museum of Art, 2003.

Pioneers settled there in the 1650's ‘making this region America's first West and giving it the name that it bears today - the Pioneer 22

Valley.’ Norman Kotker On a Clear Day You Could See New Haven, New York Times, Aug. 9, 1987. The painting is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/08.228/

Dr. Bryan Zygmont, Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, https://smarthistory.org/cole-the-oxbow/ 23

8

would inevitably be tamed - ‘where the wolf roams, the plough shall glisten’ - he mourned its

passing. There is a prophetic tone (perhaps a proto-environmental awareness) in his final

paragraphs:

‘I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing

away - the ravages of the axe are daily increasing - the most noble scenes are made desolate,

and oftentimes with a wantonness and barbarism scarcely credible in a civilized nation. ...

another generation will behold spots, now rife with beauty, desecrated by what is called

improvement.’ 24

What has become of the iconic Oxbow landscape? Paul Scott visited in April 2019. Printed

straight across an antique pearl-ware platter, his dour Near the Oxbow shows the riverbank area as it

is today, complete with litter and no trespass signs. (Fig.5) 25

Fig.5 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Near the Oxbow (After Thomas Cole). Inglaze decal collage on shell edged pearlware platter c.1850, 34cm x 42.5cm. Paul Scott 2019.

Thomas Cole, Essay on American Scenery, in American Monthly Magazine 1, ( Jan. 1836) 1-12.24

Pearl-ware describes ceramics made from a white earthenware clay, with a small amount of cobalt in the glaze which gives it a bluish 25

cast.

9

Reclaiming transferware for the twenty-first century

In 1820, at a banquet in Plymouth, Massachusetts to celebrate the bicentennial of the

Mayflower landing, statesman Daniel Webster delivered a famous oration. ‘We feel that we are

on the spot,’ he declared, ‘… where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first

lodgment, in a vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, and peopled by roving

barbarians.’ 26

According to Ada Walker Camehl, ‘The banquet was served upon one of the souvenir dinner-

sets, the guests, as they listened to the speaker's eloquent periods, looking down upon the

pictured scene which was the theme of his inspiration.’ 27

Although her statement is difficult to substantiate, it is a clear indication of how she

perceived not only the imagery of American transfer-printed earthenwares, but its social

function. Hers is one of numerous period accounts where didactic factors come to the fore.

Whole historical events may be described in detail – every piece a lesson - echoing and extending

the knowledge/s that informed the viewing experience. 28

‘It may well stir our patriotism to look on the plain buildings our ancestors were content to

view as "Beauties"; to note the primitive methods of transportation both on land and sea; to

revise our knowledge of such famous victories as McDonough's, or Bunker Hill, and to

study the rugged features of those who worked and died to make our country what she is.

All this and more may be found within the limits of a collection of Old Blue.’ 29

The sense that something can be learned is important. American transferwares maintain the

common format of a central motif framed within an ornamental border. Each firm employed

characteristic border designs that, aside from their decorative qualities, can be used to identify its

wares. The framing has another, more subtle function: it selects, promotes and makes special a

particular scene: the view has been cropped as one might crop a photograph. So too has history

been cropped; transferwares communicate socio-political-cultural allegiances both by what they

do and what they do not show. Inconvenient subjects (perhaps entire historical episodes) that

were not ‘on message’ were simply ignored. The wilderness that had supposedly been supplanted

Daniel Webster Discourse Delivered at Plymouth December 22 1820... Wells and Lilly, Boston, 1821, p.11.26

Ada Walker Camehl, The Blue-China Book Early American Scenes and History Pictured in the Pottery of the Time New York, EP Dutton, 1916, p.116. 27

Camehl’s assertion that the ‘souvenir dinner-set’ was made by the firm of Enoch Wood may be fanciful, it is certainly unsubstantiated.

‘When you have some piece with a view unmarked, the next point of interest is to settle what it is. You ... look over all the old 28

histories of this country you can find ... in hopes of verifying your china.’ N Hudson Moore The Old China Book, p.236.

N Hudson Moore, The Old China Book, Frederick A Stokes, New York, 1903, preface. 29

10

by civilisation was not uninhabited and it was fiercely contested during the American Indian

Wars; in a process of mythologizing heritage was edited and truth gave way to what Edward Said

has called ‘sanctioned narratives; over time these acquire an almost theological status, with

founding heroes, cherished ideas and values.’ 30

Historical transferwares may well look parochial to the contemporary eye. As Paul Scott

observes, ‘Depictions of American Indians are of the ‘noble savage’ and Hollywood variety, whilst

African Americans are almost entirely absent, except notably as slaves being loaded onto a ship

(flying a US flag) on Enoch Wood’s Cape Coast Castle ... Representations of other ethnic groups

(Chinese Americans etc) are nonexistent.’ 31

Fig.6 Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Across the Borderline (Trumpian Campaigne) No:2. In-glaze screen print (decal) collage on shell

edged pearlware platter, c.1820, 30cm x 40.5cm. Paul Scott 2019. Alturas Foundation Collection.

He speaks of his urge to redress ‘subject matters and perceptions’ and reclaim transferware for

the twenty-first century. An enormous barred fence will be ‘pasted across souvenir plates of

California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas’, while a shell edged pearl-ware platter will show

Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism. Chatto & Windus, London, 1993, p.380. Said cites ‘The West as America: Reinterpreting Images 30

of the Frontier, 1820-1920’ a 1991 exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute. ‘According to the exhibit, the conquest of the West ... had been transformed into a heroic meliorist narrative that disguised, romanticized, or simply eliminated the many sided truth about the actual process of conquest, as well as the destruction of both native Americans and the environment.’

Paul Scott, informal account of work in progress, May 201931

11

figures dwarfed by the same fence. (Fig.6) They are on the wrong side of the national border. 32

These ceramics will reference President Trump’s anti-immigration policies. They will be back-

stamped Trumpian Campaigne, in imitation of the ‘Texian Campaigne’ transferwares of the 1830s-40s

that depict conflict between Texas and Mexico.

Fig.7 Detail, the back of Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Across the Borderline (Trumpian Campaigne) No:2. In-glaze screen print

(decal) collage on shell edged pearlware platter, c.1820, 30cm x 40.5cm. Paul Scott 2019.

The crowd at the centre of Scott’s Souvenir of Selma plate (Fig.8) are re-enacting the Selma Bridge

Crossing of 1965, when Martin Luther-King led African American activists across the Edmund

Pettus Bridge out of Selma on a march to the state capital of Montgomery in order to register as

voters. In 2018 Paul Scott was amongst them. 33

Personal communication 25/6/2019 32

Previous attempts to exercise their voting rights had been met with extreme violence from State Troopers.33

12

Fig.8 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Selma, AL. In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 30cm dia. Paul Scott 2019.

Departure... transit... arrival... a heightened awareness of change; travel is readily

characterised in terms of liminality. More than four years of travel have informed the 34

development of New American Scenery. This extended period has allowed Scott to roam across

the country, taking in New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, Boston, Dallas,

Fort Worth, San Antonio, El Paso, Tombstone, Phoenix, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Santa Fe,

Arizona, Birmingham Alabama, Selma, Montgomery....

John Ridgway visited some of the same places in 1822 and sought out features that met with

his approval; his ‘Beauties of America’ were the public institutions he believed essential for the

proper advancement of an embryonic nation. Whatever reservations he had, he confined to his

diary: in Boston he noted ‘the great laxity of religious opinion which prevails & especially

amongst respectable society’; in Philadelphia he found the ‘... market exceedingly bad, even while

‘...a journey into the unknown, allowing yourself to be open to whatever experiences may come your way.’ Beckstead, Liminality in 34

Acculturation and Pilgrimage: When Movement Becomes Meaningful, Culture & Psychology, 2010, 16(3), p. 387.

13

I form a connexion I am not pleased with it [...] I am well nigh weary.’ He thought ‘the people

here are too much alive to getting money.’ 35

Like Ridgway, Paul Scott’s gaze has followed his interests. His travels in America have been,

in his words, ‘driven by issues and institutions as much as a desire to experience particular

landscapes.’ Unlike Ridgway there is no requirement for him to flatter potential buyers and he 36

has always made it his business to pursue socio-political themes. Here is the New Jersey

Turnpike, famous for its deadly pile-ups; the brutal geometry of Chicago rail, the magnificent

desert landscape that belies the horror of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation, the Indian

Point nuclear power plant still leaking radioactivity, as it has done for more than thirty years;

here is the scandal of the contaminated Flint Waterworks, the fenced-off toxic disaster that is the

Niagara Falls ‘Love Canal’ district (you will not find it in the holiday brochures) here on New

American Scenery souvenir wares are the run-down ‘Ghost Gardens’ of Detroit and the Californian

wildfires.

In 2009 after 138 years in business, Libbey Inc. of Toledo, Ohio closed the Syracuse China

factory in New York State and all production moved from North America. Crates full of bisque-

fired unglazed table-ware were abandoned. Paul Scott visited the site in 2016 and in 2019 he

commissioned Hollie Lyko, a Masters Graduate from Syracuse University, to collect and reclaim

a quantity of the plates. They have been used to host themed New American Scenery work, often in

the format of traditional souvenir wares. These pieces unequivocally address issues head-on;

though politically at variance from the didacticism of the original American transferware, they

are its direct descendants.

With a central image bordered by smaller cartouches, Ghost Gardens of Detroit No:2, for example,

shows the derelict city suburbs, where abandoned homes (some 78,000 buildings) and overgrown

gardens have become wasteland. (Fig.9) Detroit filed for municipal bankruptcy in July 2013 with

estimated debts of $18-20 billion. 37

Extracts from Ridgway’s diary. See: http://www.americanhistoricalstaffordshire.com/history/john-ridgways-visit-america35

Paul Scott informal account of work in progress May 201936

‘... almost a third of Detroit – covering a swath of land the size of San Francisco – has been abandoned.’ 37

Paul Harris How Detroit, the Motor City, turned into a ghost town, in the Guardian newspaper, 1/11/2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/01/detroit-michigan-economy-recession-unemployment

14

Fig.9 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Ghost Gardens of Detroit No:2. In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 30cm dia. Paul Scott 2019.

Fig.10 The back of Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Ghost Gardens of Detroit No:2.

15

Fig.11 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Pipelines & Peltier. In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 28cm dia. Paul Scott 2019. Birmingham Art Musuem, Al. collection.

On the reverse of all Paul Scott’s ceramics are found his maker’s mark, information about the

printed edition to which it belongs, and his signature. These back-stamps have proliferated on

New American Scenery works. There are eleven on the reverse of the Ghost Gardens of Detroit plate,

including a set of trade-marks reminiscent of historical transferwares.

Some plates are tantamount to documents. A portrait of incarcerated American Indian activist

Leonard Peltier presides above a photograph of a Texas pipeline, in reference to the disputed site

in Dakota. (Figs.11/12) Texts on the reverse give a summary of his unjust conviction for the

murder of two FBI agents in 1975. The ‘Angola 3’: Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert

Hillary King, who spent decades in solitary confinement at Louisiana State Penitentiary, are

accorded similar treatment.

Three pieces address the issue of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation. Paul Scott visited the

area in 2018, having read Yellow Dirt, Judy Pasternak’s moving account. Beginning in the late 38

1940s when high-grade uranium was discovered on their lands, thousands of American Indians

Judy Pasternak Yellow Dirt; An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed, Free Press, New York, 2010.38

16

Fig.12 The back of Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Pipelines & Peltier. In-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 28cm dia. Paul Scott 2019.

worked in the mines without protection from exposure to radiation and ignorant of the risks. 39

Exceptionally high incidences of cancer and congenital birth defects are amongst the continuing

effects.

Scott met with ex-miner and activist in the struggle for compensation Timothy Benally in

Shiprock New Mexico, where nuclear waste from more than twenty two uranium mines was

dumped and where the ground water is still contaminated. A cartouche on a Souvenir of Shiprock 40

plate (Fig.13) features Benally at the office of the Navajo Uranium Workers, while a pearl-ware

‘Of the 150 Navajo who worked at the uranium mines in Shiprock, 133 had died of lung cancer or various forms of fibrosis by 1980.’ 39

http://www.nuclear-risks.org/en/hibakusha-worldwide/shiprocktse-bit-ai.html 

‘In the mid 2000s, studies showed that more than 1.8 million liters of groundwater were contaminated with uranium, selenium, 40

radium, cadmium, sulfate and nitrate. Parts of the San Juan River showed uranium concentrations that were between 47 to 97 times above official safety levels.’ http://www.nuclear-risks.org/en/hibakusha-worldwide/shiprocktse-bit-ai.html 

17

Fig.14 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Uranium Series No:2, Farmstead, Cove AZ. Inglaze decal collage on shell edged pearlware platter c.1840, with uranium glass, 28.5cm x 37cm. Paul Scott 2019.

platter shows him walking along the Mesa No:1 mine road in Cove, Northern Arizona. Pieces of

uranium glass have been fired onto another pearl-ware platter, back-stamped Farmstead Cove Az

(Fig.14). Between the 1940s and the 1980s, more than seven million tons of uranium were

extracted from this landscape. 41

Materiality; a poetics of transferware

A goods lorry passes Independence Hall in Philadelphia on its way across an altered souvenir

plate, shifting the illustration into today’s world (Fig. 15). Our familiarity with the style of the

original sets up a kind of oscillation between past and present that opens space for reflection. In

one of a series titled Residual Waste another lorry drives past the oil refinery at Corpus Christi in

Houston, Texas (Fig. 16). Unromantic – though not unlovely - views on antique pearl-ware

platters titled ‘Cities Series’ present Chicago, New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and

https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup/cove-arizona-mines-cleanup41

18

Fig.15 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), American Scenery, Souvenir of Philadelphia. Inglaze decal collage, gold lustre on souvenir plate, England unknown manufacture c.1900, 22cm dia. Paul Scott, Clay Studio Phildelphia 2013. Alturas Foundation Collection.

Houston. Such images are observations: witness statements, in some sense. They may depict

urban sprawl and by implication the pollution that accompanies it, or worse: environmental

disaster - Figure 17 shows Houston partially submerged following Hurricane Harvey - but they

do not deny the geometric beauty of the city and are also seductive, elegant objects that mobilise

the vocabularies of transferwares.

‘His engagement is with the surface rather than the substance of the clay’ I wrote in 2002, but

since then Scott’s fascination with the material qualities of transferware has become more and

more pronounced. Cracks and breakages – the bane of the collector – are welcomed and put 42

to significant symbolic use, as in his ongoing series of over-printed antique platters titled Fracked -

each boasting a prominent gold-filled crack – that were begun during a 2013 residency at the

Clay Studio in Philadelphia (Fig.18). His approach has further diversified to include work where

the ceramics themselves have been cut and collaged, heightening awareness of their materiality.

Figure 19 shows the front and back of Fukushima no. 8: a 1960s Japanese Willow Pattern platter has

been physically invaded by Hokusai’s iconic Great Wave, and joined using the traditional

Japanese method of kintsugi, employing a mixture of resin and gold leaf that celebrates the

breakage, rather than attempting to disguise it.

Jo Dahn, Remember Me When This You See, (2002).42

19

Fig.16 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Residual Waste No: 3. In-glaze decal collage on shell-edge, pearlware platter c.1820, 40.5cm x 33cm. Paul Scott, 2017. Alturas Foundation Collection

Fig.17 Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, The Cities Series, Houston No: 3. In-glaze decal collage on pearlware shell edge platter c.1820, Paul Scott 2017. Alturas Foundation Collection.

20

Fig.18 Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Fracked, No:10. In-glaze screen print (decal) collage, on repaired, cracked shell-edged pearlware platter c.1820, kintsugi and gold leaf, 30cm x 40.5cm. Paul Scott 2019.

Fig.19 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), Fukushima No:4, in-glaze decal collage on broken and reassembled Willow pattern platter, marked Japan (c.1965) with Kintsugi. Wave insert from erased Willow platter (c.1840), 6cm x 35cm, Paul Scott 2014, Private Collection.

21

The golden seams take on a life of their own in installations such as Bridges, Boats and Blossoms, gliding across cut-and-joined historical pieces in what amounts to a poetics of transferware.

Fig..20 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) Bridges, Boats and Blossoms, Installation of 5 collaged 19th century transferware plates and platters with Kintsugi, 175cm x 125cm, Paul Scott 2017

(Fig.20). Similarly lyrical play distils a visual essence from fragments in Battery Park Triptych: three

antique pearl-ware platters from the Leeds Pottery, each embedded with a gilt-edged slice – like a

glimpse - from a deep blue antique platter titled Castle Park Battery, New York by Enoch Wood &

Sons (c1830) (Fig.21).

22

Fig.21 Plate 2 of Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New York Battery Park Triptych. Fragments of Enoch Wood & Sons New York Battery Park platter c.1825, collaged (with kintsugi) into three Leeds Pottery shell edged pearlware platters c. 1840, 40cm x 32cm.

Paul Scott 2015.

Digital production, commissioning and communitas

‘It does not merge identities; the gifts of each and every person are alive to the fullest. [...] It

comes unexpectedly like the wind and it warms people towards their fellow human

beings.' 43

‘People find communitas in the comradeship and fellowship of work.’ 44

Paul Scott has long used digital applications such as Adobe Photoshop to compose surface

designs in-screen. New American Scenery has seen his methods evolve further as he explores the

possibilities of digital process in the production of form. A cup plate showing the Indian Point

nuclear reactor within a border of oak leaves, for example, began as a 3D digital scan, the first

that he has ever commissioned. (Fig.22) This is one of several pieces that have entailed 45

contributions from fellow practitioners in Britain, Norway and America. Scott’s respect for the

Edith Turner, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014 (introduction).43

Edith Turner, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014 (Chapter 4)44

Measuring 3-4 inches across, a cup plate was slightly smaller than the saucer from which hot tea was drunk in the first part of the 19th 45

century. It was used as a coaster for the tea cup, to prevent marking furniture.

23

skills of others and his expressed pleasure as the prototype passed through tests, from person to

person, hand to hand, evoke notions of ‘communitas’: the existential sense of fellowship

associated with liminality, when ‘the gifts of each and every person are alive to the fullest.’

An antique cup plate was scanned at the Oslo National Academy for the Arts and a new form

was created from the scan by Ed Bentley, in a studio that was once part of the China Hall at the

famous Spode factory in Stoke on Trent, England. New slip cast cup plates were produced in 46

Longton, Staffordshire and a pearl-ware glaze was developed by Scott, in discussion with the 47

late Larry Bush. The copper-plate engraving was executed by Paul Holdway, the last Head 48

Engraver at Spode, which closed amidst considerable dismay in 2008. His brief was to replicate as

far as possible the qualities found in historical transferwares. Given freedom to interpret Scott’s

design, Holdway sourced and adapted the oak leaf and acorn border (which Scott has also used

for other pieces.) 49

Fig.22 Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Indian Point on the Hudson. Transferware cup plate with a pearlware glaze, tissue print from an engraving by Paul Holdway (former head engraver at the Spode Works), 10cm dia. Paul Scott 2020.

The result is a composite object of mixed pedigree and a kind of homage: a contemporary cup

plate whose dense imagery is characteristic of the originals, with which it is effectively in

dialogue. There is a strong sense of continuity and change, as Holdway’s traditional engraving

skills are showcased while other aspects of the work are digitally generated. Holdway’s

https://www.edbentley.co.uk/section192471.html46

http://www.ceramicsbydesign.co.uk/47

Larry Bush was Professor of Ceramics at Rhode Island School of Design 1984-201948

For discussion of how factory based engravers interpreted designs, see Halliday, Richard, The transferware engraver: Training, practice and scope 49

at the Spode Works, PhD thesis, Manchester School of Art, 2018.

24

contribution is acknowledged via a back-stamp on several New American Scenery pieces (as are

the contributions of other practitioners whenever they have been involved). Here Paul Scott

redresses more than a hundred years of imbalance: historical transferwares were not as a rule the

focus of in-depth aesthetic analyses. Features such as the sharpness of the engraving were only

mentioned in passing by collectors, in order to identify pieces by particular firms; they were

rarely discussed for their own sake and little consideration was given to the identity of the

engravers whose skills were crucial to the quality of the ceramics.

Curatorial practice: the intervention

The New American Scenery exhibition tour will begin in the Lucy Aldrich Gallery at The Rhode

Island School of Design Museum (RISD) under the aegis of the Raid the Icebox Now project, which

commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Andy Warhol’s ground-breaking and controversial Raid

the Icebox intervention. Paul Scott will select and install artefacts from the RISD collection 50

alongside his own work. He will re-curate the exhibition for each subsequent venue.

Interventions have become an established way for museums to promote mindfulness in the

viewing experience and embrace critique. They involve creative juxtapositioning and often

require new research. Supposedly run of the mill curatorial activities that may otherwise go

unremarked are spotlighted; there is thus a significant element of performance in the

intervention process, and a promise of transformation (the practitioners involved in Raid the Icebox

Now will ‘create new bodies of work or create a unique curatorial project ... question dominant

narratives.’ ) 51

RISD Museum houses a substantial collection of American transfer-printed earthenwares,

including 250 pieces that were given in 1938 by Edward B. Aldrich (1871-1957) in memory of his

wife, Lora E. Aldrich (1874-1931 née Lawson). The year before, one of Edward’s sisters – Lucy 52

Truman Aldrich – had donated a significant collection of eighteenth century porcelain figures,

https://www.risd.edu/news/stories/raid-the-icebox-now/50

RISD website https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/raid-icebox-now 51

It is likely that Lora Aldrich, rather than her husband, collected them. Brown/RISD Community Art Project, "Calendar of Events 52

February 1941". https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/brownrisd_communityartproject_calendarevents/37 The Aldrichs were a wealthy Republican family. Edward’s father was Senator Nelson Aldrich (1841-1915) a man with enormous political influence. Edward himself was President and a Director of the Times Publishing Company; amongst his other professional interests were several African connections: he was President of the American Congo Company and Vice-President of the International Rubber Company.

25

which are normally displayed in the Lucy Aldrich Gallery, a period English wood-panelled room

that was imported for the purpose. A pamphlet from 1941 describes the figures glowingly as: 53

‘choice examples of the products of nearly every European factory of consequence. It was in

the making of figures that the most skilful workmen were employed, the most lavish pains

expended, the most ambitious hopes placed. [...] Rhode Islanders would have to travel very

far indeed to find a collection comparable to the Aldrich Collection.’ 54

In terms of cultural status Lora E Aldrich’s transfer-printed earthenware pales into

insignificance beside her sister-in-law’s exquisite porcelain. In the same pamphlet it is described

as ‘...a ware which in the early years of the last century was well within the reach of the most

modest pocketbook. Quantities of it were manufactured especially for the American market.’ 55

That, of course, was the point and Paul Scott has expressed a rather gleeful pleasure at the

prospect of replacing the porcelain with lowly transferwares. Costly porcelain figures speak of

other times and other people; their narrative range is limited compared with the stories told in

the theatre of Old Blue.

One of the most striking items in the Aldrich transferware collection and a major focus for

Paul Scott in his curatorial/interventionist role is a large platter by Enoch Wood & Sons titled

Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast Africa. (Fig.20). Its qualities are comparable to the Highlands Hudson

River platter by the same firm, discussed earlier, but this view has a troubling history: from

1664-1807 Cape Coast Castle was the principal British centre for the transatlantic Slave Trade.

The platter shows a picturesque seascape with a sailing ship flying two American flags. Across

the water is the white castle building with a large Union Jack on a flagpole. In the immediate

foreground a shallop is carrying six seated black figures towards the sailing ship. Could they be

slaves?

In the company of transferwares such as Ridgway’s Beauties of America, the Cape Coast Castle

platter seems an anomaly. Yet many American views owe their existence to the Slave Trade: huge

expanses of America scenery were formed when forests were cleared and - through slave labour -

the land became ‘an agro-capitalist landscape.’ 56

Deborah Del Gais, Two Remarkable Women/Sisters, Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online, 2009, https://www.issuelab.org/53

resource/two-remarkable-womensisters.html

Brown/RISD Community Art Project, "Calendar of Events February 1941"54

Brown/RISD Community Art Project, "Calendar of Events February 1941"55

Colleen Walsh, The Landscape of Slavery in The Harvard Gazette 17/12/2010 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/the-landscape-56

of-slavery/

26

Fig.23 Cape Coast Castle, transferware platter by Enoch Wood & Sons, c. 1830. Paul Scott Collection.

The platter attracted relatively little comment amongst the collecting community and none

that makes reference to the Slave Trade. Alice Morse Earle describes it as one of a group of ‘very 57

richly colored, clearly printed, and beautifully drawn pieces decorated with spirited marine views

and clear and graceful shell borders. These were evidently made for the American market, for on

all of them appears prominently a full-rigged ship bearing the American flag; yet they cannot be

classed as "American views." 58

The American flags puzzled collectors and an article that appeared in the 1902 periodical

‘Old China’ offered a pragmatic reason for their inclusion: 'altogether too much importance has

been attached ... to the meaning of the American flag found on so many ships on dark blue

Staffordshire.’ The flag is there merely ‘...to make it as attractive to the American public and as

‘E. Wood & Sons produced many views of scenery characteristic of other countries, India, Africa, Italy, etc. among them being such 57

well-known places as Calcutta and Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, Africa.’ N Hudson Moore The Old China Book p.26 (My emphasis). Edwin Barber included the platter without comment in a list of eight ‘Miscellaneous Foreign Views, dark blue.’ Anglo-American Pottery; Old English China With American Views, A Manual For Collectors, Press of The Clay-Worker, Indianapolis, 1899 p.160.

Alice Morse Earle, China Collecting in America p. 325-326. Morse Earle notes an ‘Anti-Slavery Plate ... printed in a purplish and rather light 58

blue’ and mentions that when Abolitionist ceramics bearing the inscription ‘Lovejoy the first Martyr to American Liberty; Alton, Nov. 7th 1837’ were sold at auction, the proceeds were donated to the Society of Abolitionists. ‘If this account is true’, she comments, ‘these plates are certainly most interesting relics of those interesting days.’ She does not appear to have recognised the similarly ‘interesting’ aspects of the scene on the Cape Coast Castle platter. China Collecting in America p.332.

27

saleable as possible.’ Nevertheless, today the Cape Coast Castle image irresistibly evokes the trans-59

Atlantic Slave Trade and such comments appear disingenuous. One wonders why Enoch Wood,

a supporter of the Abolition Movement, chose it; who were his customers? How might they have

understood the image?

The Slave Trade Act of 1807 abolished slavery in Britain, but slavery was not

comprehensively banned throughout the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833

and in the interim the struggle to end it continued. In 1808 the West Africa Squadron of the

British Navy was formed to patrol the West African coast. In 1819 the Squadron was joined by

United States Navy warships known as the African Slave Trade Patrol. The print source for the

Cape Coast Castle platter illustration was a coloured aquatint published in 1806; it does not show

any flags – American or otherwise - on the ship. Enoch Wood was a known Abolitionist. 60

Perhaps he added them as a mark of approval.

Cape Coast Castle has become a site of pilgrimage. Visiting in 2009 President Obama stated

that it ‘reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil.’ The Cape Coast Castle 61

platter has probably been in the RISD store for over eighty years. Whether or not it was 62

intended to applaud the joining of American and British forces in the Abolitionist cause, in Paul

Scott’s words, ‘it shines a light on a very dark part of the American story and it is still a potent

piece.’ Rhode Island was the point of entry for more than half the African slaves who were 63

trafficked to America and Scott’s intervention will raise questions about the legacy of the Slave

Trade. He plans to install the platter as part of a group that will include an original Souvenir of 64

Providence, a Rowland Marsellus plate overprinted with (one might say haunted by) the Cape Coast

‘Not only is [the flag] found on many views of ships in foreign ports ... but on views in which the presence of an American ship seems 59

impossible... ‘A Puzzling Series of Dark Blue’ in Old China Vol. 1 No: 6, S.Robineau Editor 1902, p.85-87.

Cape Coast Castle a British Settlement on the Gold Coast Africa 1806 engraved by J.Hill from a painting by G.Webster http://60

george3.splrarebooks.com/collection/view/cape-coast-castle-a-british-settlement-on-the-gold-coast-africa.-to-his-roy Webster’s original painting shows a large British flag on the sailing ship and blue uniform-clad sailors on deck. Further research may establish why the Union Jack was omitted from the print.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/12/barack-obama61

There are no records that suggest otherwise. I am grateful to Emily Banas, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, RISD for 62

information on this point.

Paul Scott personal communication, May 2019.63

‘The American slave trade from 1727 to 1807 might better be called the Rhode Island slave trade...’ Stanley Lemons Rhode Island and the 64

Slave Trade in Rhode Island History Vol. 60, No.4, Rhode Island Historical Society. Paradoxically, in 1787 Rhode Island was the first state to ban participation in the slave trade; the law proved unenforceable however and slavery was not effectively prohibited by Congress until 1808.

28

Fig.24 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Providence, Cape Coast Castle. In-glaze screen print (decal) on Souvenir of Providence by The Rowland & Marsellus Co., 1894, 25cm dia. Paul Scott 2019, Alturas Foundation Collection.

Castle imagery (Fig.24) and Andy Warhol’s Race Riot (1964) from the RISD collection. He has 65

collaborated with New England ceramist Mara Superior and she has made a high-relief, cast and

modelled porcelain platter based on the original that he will hand-paint with a version of Race

Riot (after Warhol), who in 1969 baffled RISD curators by rejecting canonical works in favour of

copies. (Fig. 25). 66

In the event, Warhol’s Race Riot was displayed elsewhere in the museum. 65

For further discussion, see Natalia Musteata, Defrosting the Icebox: A Contextual Analysis of Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox 1, Journal of Curatorial 66

Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2016,

29

Fig.25 Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, After Wood & Warhol. Hand made porcelain platter by Mara Superior, with painted underglaze. Paul Scott, Mara Superior 2019.

American Scenery on the threshold (August 2019)

This essay has tracked the development of New American Scenery; in so doing it has mapped

the terrain of Paul Scott’s response to American transfer-printed earthenwares. I have witnessed

(at a distance) his ‘scavenging’ - archival and otherwise - and his ‘harvesting’ of the results,

followed his extensive preparations in studio and noted the significant broadening of his creative

reach through digital process and commissioning. The project has given rise to a wide range of

work with complex layers of reference; in his words: ‘The scope of my research over the past five

years or so, and the issues that it has touched are vast.’ 67

Research and practice went hand in hand in the Staffordshire potteries. Writing in 1829,

Simeon Shaw thought that ‘The very extensive Manufactory of Enoch Wood and Sons ...

presents all the appearance of a most extensive Laboratory, and the Machinery of an

Experimentalist. Here also is a Museum, altogether unique, containing Specimens of the Progress

Paul Scott informal account of works in progress May 201967

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of this Art.’ The ceramic genre that manufacturers such as Enoch Wood and John Ridgway 68

established has proved to have great flexibility and endurance. That Scott’s work strikes a deep

chord is due in part to our recognition of its roots.

Reclaiming, responding, updating, truth-telling... ‘Prophets and artists tend to be liminal and

marginal people’ wrote Victor Turner, himself a prophet of liminality, ‘who strive with a

passionate sincerity .... to enter into vital relations with other men in fact or imagination.’ 69

Considered as a project, the durational nature of New American Scenery – with at its core a ritual

quality and sense of performance in Scott’s passage(s) through the American landscape - lends

itself to a discourse of liminality, which ‘encompasses both essence and process: it addresses and

values the physical space that is a borderline or threshold between things, as well as the passage

or movement across whatever that threshold space or borderline demarcates...’ 70

Now at just such a threshold, the ground is shifting. As the first New American Scenery

exhibition draws closer there is a mounting sense of anticipation, of events gathering speed.

Regular posts on social media function as a visual diary, opening Scott’s practice to a wider

audience. A recent online image shows sheet after sheet of print decals pegged up to dry in

studio. The caption reads: ‘A mammoth printing session yesterday... but all now done in

readiness for my upcoming residency.’ He will complete many pieces during his residency at 71

Project Art in Cummington Massachusetts – and he left more than a fortnight ago. There can be

no closure, no neat academic conclusion: events have overtaken this account.

We are on the telephone. I am in Wales, Paul Scott is in Massachusetts. I have asked how he

thinks New American Scenery has changed him and he is describing two large sampler jugs that he

has just completed. (Fig.23) They were slip cast in Staffordshire using a mould that was

developed from his drawings and photographs. He tells the story of the jugs: of the historical 72

transferwares that inspired them; of how he was seduced by the ‘beautiful fat-bellied’ forms. ‘I

couldn’t have dreamt of doing something like this before’ he says. Yet in studio they intimidated

Simeon Shaw, History of the Staffordshire Potteries, Scott, Greenwood & Co; London, 1900 (1st published 1829) p.30.68

Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, Cornell University Press, New York, 1991 (1st pub 1969), p.128.69

Joan Wry, The Art of the Threshold: A Poetics of Liminality, in Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, PhD Thesis, McGill University, Montreal 70

2010, P5.

3/8/2019: https://www.instagram.com/p/B0siVwWgTVF/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B0likEmA_MA/71

The form and mould were produced by Ed Bentley in Stoke on Trent; the jugs were slip cast at Ceramics by Design in Longton, 72

Staffordshire.

31

him and he left decorating them until the very end. ‘There they were’ he says, with a shrug in his

voice, ‘sitting blankly’.

He need not have worried….

‘The jugs are spectacular by the way’ he writes in a follow-up e mail, ‘I am so pleased with them.’

©Jo Dahn September 2019

Fig. 26 Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jugs Nos: 1 & 2, Stay Nasty, Big Bend & Hot Dogs. Earthenware jugs with pearlware glaze… designed by Paul Scott and Ed Bentley, 37cm x 40cm x 28cm. Model made by Ed

Bentley, jugs fabricated by "Ceramics by Design", Longton, Stoke on Trent, England.

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